INNER CITY:
AN INSTALLATION BY CERAMIC SCULPTOR ARNIE ZIMMERMAN AND ARCHITECT TIEGO MONTEPEGADO
Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design
Providence, R.I.
through January 3, 2010
<--CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE FULL ARTICLE-->
by Meredith Cutler (for Artscope Magazine)
Article Excerpt:
AT THE HEART OF RISD’S CANAL-SIDE CAMPUS, AN OLD TROLLEY TUNNEL LINKS THE GROUND LEVEL OF COLLEGE HILL TO ITS LOFTY HEIGHTS. BARNACLE-LIKE CERAMIC GROWTHS FESTOON THE TILE SHELTER OF THIS PUBLIC TRANSIT NEXUS, WHICH HUDDLES IN STARK CONTRAST TO THE CLEAN LINES OF ITS YOUNG NEIGHBOR, THE CHACE CENTER.
Inaugurated in Fall 2008, the Center houses an expansion of the RISD Museum, linked by a glass sky bridge to the Decorative Arts galleries of Pendleton House, built in 1906.
Arriving by escalator at the museum’s third level main gallery with this stratified urbanity on my mind, I am confronted with a grid marked in white tape on the polished concrete floor. Rising from the grid are three squat pedestals, each bearing a place identity: Lisbon (Portugal), Leeuwarden (the Netherlands) and Providence. “Inner City,” a modular installation that has grown to include over 180 ceramic buildings and figurines by sculptor Arnie Zimmerman, has visited all three of these cities. In each exhibition venue, the installation has occupied a distinct footprint, thanks to Zimmerman’s collaborator, architect Tiago Montepegado. The installation at the RISD Museum represents the work’s largest iteration to date.
The white tape continues into the 4,000 square foot inner sanctum, demarcating a tidy, right-angled street grid punctuated by 26 pedestals of varied height.
Large, stoneware edifices, more suggestive of factories than dwellings, rise from these blocks, their fractured walls bearing the telltale signs of kiln accident or earthquake. It’s an ironic urban plan to find here in New England, where urban arteries skin old cow paths to double back on oneway streets and endless, orange-coned roadway improvement projects.
Crawling and perched throughout Zimmerman’s ruinous vignettes, grim-faced clay figurines, seemingly without race, gender or age, labor in rough-hewn detail. Their uniforms are generic — some wear bright sweaters, marked with shiny glaze “X” suspenders, suggesting secondhand and ill-fitted clothing. In Zimmerman’s city, there is no cult of style. Sweatshirts, hats and harlequin patterns echo Goodwill bins.
<--CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE FULL ARTICLE-->
Image: Arnie Zimmerman and Tiago Montepegado. Installation views and details from “Inner City,” RISD Museum of Art, Providence, RI, 2009. ©Arnie Zimmerman, courtesy of Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design. Providence, Rhode Island. Photography by Erik Gould.
